Erie Canal Day 3 - Lyons to Fairport

Morning in Lyons

Day 3, 10/12/16 Another unhurried start in Lyons, breakfast, hot showers in the very nice boater facilities provided by the Lyons Fire Department, and a walk into town to get something or other (oh, I think this was the day we plugged the galley sink and the one thing we couldn't find on the boat when we needed it was a plunger, so we went to a hardware store to get one), then we set out for the town of Fairport.

It was another beautiful day, we cruised around 25 miles and went through locks 27, 28 A and B, 29, and 30. I did a little bit of a journal entry partway through the trip, saying "Not to curse us since we haven't hit 30 yet but we are getting reasonably good at these". I also mentioned that the weather was continuing to be spectacular and that there were more jumping fish and herons and kingfishers and some nice foliage too - that was about all I got in at that point before something (possibly Lock 30) came up to distract me. We made good time and got to Fairport by 3:30, which gave us a little time to relax before Dave and Lenore, who we'd sailed with in the US Virgin Islands back in January 2015; we did a little walking around scoping things out, checked in with the dockmaster and paid our exorbitant docking fee - seven dollars for our little 24 foot cruiser, no, not $7 a foot, $7 for the whole boat for the whole night!

After that we went back to the boat and got out our books, but that's when I remembered I'd brought a sketch pad along, and with a bridge quite nearby and the canal not being very wide here,  this was a perfect setup for actually trying to draw our boat, so I did, and was happy enough with the result that I'll share it again. :) Mostly when I draw anything that's more than an actual doodle (all of my artsy stuff gets labelled "doodles" here, but there's real doodles and then there's the stuff I actually spend some time on) I'm copying from a picture so it was interesting to actually draw our boat from life, and with something of a time limit too (the thing I find the most frustrating about my attempts at drawing and painting is how unbelievably slow I am, so doing this with the clock sort of ticking was a good little challenge). 

Lenore and Dave showed up right on time - I think it was 5 - one of the things we'd done in the scoping-out-the-area process was get some more beer, because I'd envisioned us maybe having some cheese and crackers on board before we headed out and I wanted to be able to offer some nice local beer, but as it turns out, four adults on this boat turns out to make for a very crowded Nomad, so we dropped that idea and just showed them the boat (which took all of 5 minutes and even that was kind of superfluous as it turned out Lenore's dad had done the exact same kind of trip as we were doing at some point, so they'd seen it before) and then headed out for the fun trip to Powell's that I'd already shared as my Halloween post. After that, we came back for dinner at Mulconry's Pub, which had some really good Irish pub grub (I had a steak and mushroom pie that was just wonderful), then repaired to the Fairport Brewing Company for one more round, they have a great setup there for pleasant Fall evenings with an outdoor seating area where there are tables with firepits to keep you nice and warm. It was great catching up, I think the only thing that could've improved that would've been if there were marshmallows to roast over the firepits. I suppose that could get messy, though.

Another fine day on the canal. This was the westernmost spot on our travels.

As usual, click on any picture for a better view, but I did put some captions and additional info that you might find interesting in amongst the pictures this time

 Fire department heading out for a call - boater facilities for Lyons are here in the firehouse.

More morning in Lyons shots as we go to the hardware store

Lock 27, leaving Lyons

There were tubs of peppermint at the stairs up to the firehouse, prominently labelled "Peppermint"; I didn't recognize the significance of that until we were leaving town and saw the big sign - remember how I was learning about each of these canal towns having a manufacturing specialty of one sort or another? It turns out that Lyons was "Once the Peppermint Capital of the World". 

There's another canal boat,

 This old tug caught my eye - turns out she's caught my friend Will's eye too, more than once, her name is Grouper and Will's done a whole series of posts about her over on Tugster. 

Cruising, lovely day, lots of people out fishing

Lock 28 B - going up

Newark, NY, loved these murals they had on the bridge - wish the brush hadn't been allowed to grow up over the one on the side, it's neat how it shows a mule team walking right where the towpath would've been.

More of these later in the trip.

Foliage

More Foliage

Heron!

Speaking of towpath, a lot of the old towpaths are now maintained as recreational trails, and there were tons of bikers and hikers and joggers out enjoying the day. This would be another great way to explore the area - you can cycle town to town, inn to inn - I'm not even a cyclist and that sounds like a lot of fun to me.  

The railroad follows a good bit of the Erie Canal route; I wish I could've gotten a shot of one of the Amtrak trains coming through because I'd seen a canal boat from the train when I went home from Michigan that way during the summer and it was fun now to be seeing the train from a boat - they all came through too fast though, so this CSX locomotive will have to do. 

Rower a little ways outside of Fairport

Same rower in Fairport heading home again.

Fairport foliage

Canal from the lift bridge - we're on the left, up by the smokestack and the reddest tree (that's the one shown above). 

This is when I went across the canal to draw our boat - didn't have time to do the whole scene but at least I took a picture. 

A couple more pix of Fairport's  waterfront, and that's it for today.